**Teens and Money**: This site offers fun, short, and profitable articles about money. Whether you want to make a million, learn how the stock market works, or how to get more money from your parents, this site if for you.
**New York Times' "Portraits of Grief"**: These people (all 9/11 victims) lead interesting lives. Honor them so that from their lives and the reminder of their loss, we might better appreciate and live our own.
**Daily Cartoon**: While you can, if you wish, check out other cartoons listed in the left margin. In Zits the cartoonist explores the life of adolescents and their relationships with parents in a humorous but intelligent way.
**Poetry 180**: This site is devoted to high school students. US poet laureate Billy Collins feels that poetry must be read and enjoyed, not constantly "tied to a chair and beaten with a hose until it says what it means." Here you will find 180 poems, one for each day of the school year.
Daily Word: Every word they choose is worth knowing, but what is interesting is the story behind the word. Every day you get a word and its history.
Pictures of the Week: Time magazine offers a compelling visual documentation of the week through photographs. The site also includes easily accessible archives of past weeks. Every picture here is worth...well, you guessed it: a thousand words.
Reading Literature
1. Searching for Books that Touched Lives: This article appeared in the Washington Post. It is about a teacher in Washington, D.C. who read I Hear America Reading and asked her students to bring in the books that meant the most to them. Consider writing about the book you would bring in and what it means to you.
2. **Favorite Poem Project**: This page offers a list of Americans' favorite poems; each poem is available in written form but also as a cool video (never more than five minutes) based on the poem.
3. **Six-Word Memoirs**: These memoirs, each six words long, are accompanied by a drawing or photograph that adds an interesting visual element to the story. Amazing what you can say in six words.
**Smithsonian American Art Museum**: A site that honors our diverse artistic traditions; includes interactive exhibits and experiences. You will love this site.
**The Oxford Project**: The photographer set out to capture every person in a town and photograph them over a twenty-five year period to see how they changed. Presented in an ebook format with short but interesting text that tells you more about the project.
**Found Magazine**: "We collect found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, doodles—anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes.We certainly didn't invent the idea of found stuff being cool. Every time we visit our friends in other towns, someone's always got some kind of unbelievable discovered note or photo on their fridge. We decided to make a bunch of projects so that everyone can check out all the strange, hilarious and heartbreaking things people have picked up and passed our way. "
**Picturing America**: "Picturing America, an initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities, brings masterpieces of American art into classrooms and libraries nationwide. Students and citizens will gain a deeper appreciation of our country's history and character through the study and understanding of its art. The nation's artistic heritage—our paintings, sculpture, architecture, fine crafts, and photography—offers unique insights into the character, ideals, and aspirations of our country.
**Indexed**: Here is a description from Time which gave Indexed.com one of its 2008 Web Awards: Created by writer and illustrator Jessica Hagy, this blog reduces the rich pageantry of life to small Venn Diagrams and bar graphs that graphically and (often hilariously) highlight life's profundities and absurdities. One diagram features three circles labeled "laxatives," "acne cream," and "wart removal" sharing an intersection marked "no eye contact with the cashier". Another Venn fable: three circles marked "crumbs" "pennies" and "years of your life" share the intersection "in the couch cushions." A dating/romance line graph shows a steadily declining number of "potential mates without baggage" as one's age increases, with the non-baggage mates plummeting to zero after age 40.
**Peace Corps Stories**: Here you will find some of the journals written by Peace Corps Volunteers about their countries and experiences. These stories offer "day in the life" views of what it is like to live in other countries.
**War Letters**: Launched on November 11, 1998, the Legacy Project is a national, all-volunteer initiative that encourages Americans to honor and remember those who have served—or are currently serving—this nation in wartime by seeking out and preserving their letters and e-mails home. Every one of these individuals has a distinct voice and personality, and our mission is to preserve their stories—as expressed in their own words—for posterity.
Reading Multimedia Texts
# **This American Life**: Here is how they describe their own wonderful show: "We view the show as an experiment. We try things. There was the show where we taped for 24 hours in an all-night restaurant. And the show where we put a band together from the musicians' classified ads. And the show where we followed a group of swing voters for months, recorded their reactions to everything that happened in the election up through their final decision. And the show where one of our contributors went on a fast to find out if, in fact, fasting leads to enlightenment as promised.We sometimes think of it as a documentary show for people who normally hate documentaries. In addition to the radio show, our staff has a movie deal with Warner Brothers which may lead to stories from the radio show being made into motion pictures."
**Teen Diaries**: Since 1996, the Teenage Diaries series has been giving tape recorders to young people around the country to report on their own lives. They conduct interviews, keep an audio journal and record the sounds of daily life usually collecting more than 40 hours of raw tape over the course of a year.
America's Story: This well-organized site offers a range of texts that explore people, events, music, and trends in American history. Articles are easy to find and offer interesting information and useful links about people and events worth knowing about.
**Radio Diaries**: Our mission is to find extraordinary stories in ordinary places. We work with people to document their own lives for public radio: teenagers, seniors, prison inmates and others whose voices are rarely heard. We help people share their stories and their lives in their own words, creating documentaries that are powerful, surprising, intimate and timeless
Lost and Found Sounds: A very cool site, created and run by The Kitchen Sisters. These radio pieces combine storytelling and history, sounds and images. This site and their work has won many awards. For those who like to hear their stories read by great voices, with rich textures of sound behind them, you can't go wrong. A long menu of pieces to choose from each month. All are short, all are very good.
**Wisdom Project**: Andrew Zuckerman went around the world to interview well known artists, thinkers, scientists, and leaders to ask them what they have learned. These short videos offer powerful insights into their experiences and our own.
**Digital Storytelling**: The Center for Digital Storytelling is a non-profit training, project development, and research organization dedicated to assisting people in using digital media to tell meaningful stories from their lives. Our focus is on developing large-scale projects for community, educational, and business institutions, using the methods and principles of the Digital Storytelling Workshop. We also offer workshops for organizations and individuals and serve as an international clearinghouse of information and resources about storytelling and new media.
Reading the Media
# American Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame: The title tells you all you need to know. A very good web site with interesting exhibits about musicians and music.
The Newshour Essays: These five-minute video essays appear regularly at the end of The Newshour. They are wonderful commentaries on our society, but more importantly they are good. They incorporate words and images to help us understand art, sports, politics, and ourselves. You can view the actual video-essays through the web site. When you go to this page you see a nicely organized list of topics, complete with descriptions of what they talk about in the essay.
Newseum: A very cool site that offers those interested in news an interactive history of…the news. Of special interest are such features as "Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs," an online exhibit of photographs that show us the images behind the stories we read. You will like this site if you like: images, cultures, news, or technology.
Reading Information
# The World Question Center 2001 : The Edge is a meeting place for thinkers who share their Big Questions and answers to them. Currently, there are responses to "What questions are no longer being asked?"
Internet Women's History Sourcebook: For Women's History Month, start with this thorough set of links to primary sources in women's history world wide. For major historical periods and for different continents and countries, you'll find documents on general resources, great women of that time and place, the structure of women's lives, women's agency, feminism (where present), women's oppression, and gender construction.
Inventor's Museum: This site includes concise articles about different inventions and inventors. The inventions and inventors are organized into different categories for easy reference. You could look, for example, under "Women Inventors," or under "Medical Inventions." (Note: the previous link for this "died." I am hoping this new link serves as a useful substitute.)
**Indexed**: Time magazine describes her blog: "Created by writer and illustrator Jessica Hagy, this blog reduces the rich pageantry of life to small Venn Diagrams and bar graphs that graphically and (often hilariously) highlight life's profundities and absurdities. One diagram features three circles labeled "laxatives," "acne cream," and "wart removal" sharing an intersection marked "no eye contact with the cashier". Another Venn fable: three circles marked "crumbs" "pennies" and "years of your life" share the intersection "in the couch cushions." A dating/romance line graph shows a steadily declining number of "potential mates without baggage" as one's age increases, with the non-baggage mates plummeting to zero after age 40. But there's always a graphic ray of hope. To honor the death of Kurt Vonnegut, three circles marked "cruelty" "death," and "waste" intersect at Vonnegut's lifelong sweet spot: "humor and hope."
The Most Influential People of the 20th Century
To mark the turn of the century, TIME has profiled 100 individuals—from five fields of endeavor—who helped shape the last 100 years.
Scientists and ThinkersPeople who overthrew our inherited ideas about logic, language, learning, mathematics, economics and even space and time
Heroes and Icons Twenty people who articulate the longings of the last 100 years, exemplifying courage, selflessness, exuberance, superhuman ability and amazing grace.
Albert Einstein: Person of the Century
He was the iconic 20th century scientist, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed. Read the full story by Frederic Golden.
Quick Picks
Reading Literature
1. Searching for Books that Touched Lives: This article appeared in the Washington Post. It is about a teacher in Washington, D.C. who read I Hear America Reading and asked her students to bring in the books that meant the most to them. Consider writing about the book you would bring in and what it means to you.2. **Favorite Poem Project**: This page offers a list of Americans' favorite poems; each poem is available in written form but also as a cool video (never more than five minutes) based on the poem.
3. **Six-Word Memoirs**: These memoirs, each six words long, are accompanied by a drawing or photograph that adds an interesting visual element to the story. Amazing what you can say in six words.
Reading Images
# **NEW: National Gallery of Art Virtual Tours**: The National Gallery in Washington, D.C. offers excellent virtual tours and exhibits of different artists. Highly recommended.Reading Letters and Journals
Reading Multimedia Texts
# **This American Life**: Here is how they describe their own wonderful show: "We view the show as an experiment. We try things. There was the show where we taped for 24 hours in an all-night restaurant. And the show where we put a band together from the musicians' classified ads. And the show where we followed a group of swing voters for months, recorded their reactions to everything that happened in the election up through their final decision. And the show where one of our contributors went on a fast to find out if, in fact, fasting leads to enlightenment as promised.We sometimes think of it as a documentary show for people who normally hate documentaries. In addition to the radio show, our staff has a movie deal with Warner Brothers which may lead to stories from the radio show being made into motion pictures."Reading the Media
# American Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame: The title tells you all you need to know. A very good web site with interesting exhibits about musicians and music.Reading Information
# The World Question Center 2001 : The Edge is a meeting place for thinkers who share their Big Questions and answers to them. Currently, there are responses to "What questions are no longer being asked?"The Most Influential People of the 20th Century
To mark the turn of the century, TIME has profiled 100 individuals—from five fields of endeavor—who helped shape the last 100 years.He was the iconic 20th century scientist, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed. Read the full story by Frederic Golden.